Ambulances 'failing to record true response times'

Health trusts in England are deliberately failing to record accurately ambulance response times to emergency 999 calls in order to meet government targets, research suggested today.

Wide variation in the methods the trusts use to record the times casts doubt on Department of Health (DoH) statistics, according to an investigation by BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The DoH says 86.7% of ambulances are meeting the target: of arriving at the scene of a life-threatening emergency within eight minutes of an emergency call being logged, in 75% of cases .

However, some of the 26 trusts that claim to be complying do not start recording their response times until one and a half or two minutes after they receive a 999 call, and in at least one case there was a three-minute delay, Today found.

Roger Thane, the chief executive of Staffordshire ambulance trust, which starts recording its response times no more than 30 seconds after a 999 call is received, said the use of delayed start times could mask poor performance.

Mr Thane warned there was a danger that some services were not being "open and honest" about response times.

He told the programme: "God made us so that if we stop breathing, our heart stops. You have got, basically, eight minutes to do something. No matter how we delay ourselves in the timing, the timing for the human body has not changed.

"In other words, we are not being open and honest in how long it is taking us to process, how long it is taking us to get to that call."

The time limit for responding to so-called category A calls is calculated according to the maximum time for saving someone who has had a cardiac arrest. Trusts get more money from government if they meet the target.

Mr Thane said it was widely accepted that ambulance services did not start their clocks for one and a half minutes - the time it took to obtain information on the name, condition and location of the patient - and that "in some cases it might be over four minutes".

The Today report said the variation in the ways ambulance response times were recorded had led to bizarre anomalies across the country. For example, Berkshire ambulance trust classified 8% of its 999 calls as category A emergencies while in Staffordshire the figure was 46%. The national average was put at around 30%.

Health minister Lord Warner told Today a review of emergency response times had been carried out and a report would be published next week.

The minister said the report would propose reforms to standardise timing procedures. He said: "I have accepted that we need to improve the standardisation of procedures. I confidently expect us to be moving towards a more standardised basis for starting the clock.

"Certainly, it is not acceptable to have huge variation around the country."